Page 90 of Royal Lies

"So what? That just means she'suniqueand thatyou'reweak. If you were strong enough you wouldn't have needed to struggle with her birth," the boy‘s seething rage was clear in the frost coating the walls of the alley. The icy chill to the air cast a mist of frozen steam blanketing around them.

"Strong? You callthatstrong?" The woman questioned, gesturing to the girl. Her sneer wrinkled the woman's petite round nose.

"She is a monster; she was neversupposedto be born. She willonlybring chaos and havoc to the world;thatis her purpose.Do you even know what it takes to give birth to a siren? There's a reason why we are so limited in this world, and it's not because ofyourkind. Birthing a siren means giving up one's life, for a siren draws in power, they take and never give, and an infant like her, who had no control and still doesn't I see, will only destroy this world. Iwasstrong enough, Ilivedaftershetried to kill me. So let me return thefavor." With those venomous words spat between them, the woman let go of her magic completely.

The rain suddenly halted in mid-air as if time had stopped. The droplets’ crystal-like tear-drop shape spun, all of them pointed toward the girl and boy like knives headed straight for them.

"Everetta!" The boy screamed as the hurdle of raining swords pierced right at them.

There was nothing the boy could do; he lacked magic. As the crystal-like points of water cut through their skin nicking their face, arms, and legs. Ripping through their soaked clothing. Dampening their already muddied attire into a stain of red.

The girl felt it, the havoc that was about to burst from her. She already knew her mother never liked her; she knew. She was told so by the queen. Yet, she still foolishlyhoped, and that hope was her downfall.

What did she expect her mother to say? That she was sorry? That she had no choice?That she wanted to give the girl a good life that was why she left? No, she could have lived a happy life without abandoning the girl. The woman could have been the one to train the girl in magic. Instead, the girl had ventured to a place no fae should traverse to learn about her magic.

The woman’s sole gift toward the girl was seducing a prince and giving her life. So why else did the woman leave the girl, it had to have only been hatred.Why, why did everyone hate her in this realm? Why does everyone betray her?The queen wasright she should have never sought out her mother. No, not her mother, the Siren that shared her blood, and only that.

Her sympathy destroyed, her mind cleared, the girl was finally able to think properly.

The girl paused the shower of sabers mid-air. Flipping her raised hand downward as the pellets dropped clinging against the stone tiles like small glass jewelry. It was a testament to the woman's magic that the glass shards didn’t shatter as they slammed down. The girl's golden light magic covered her and the boy in a small dome, protecting them from further harm. But just as the girl made a move to strike the woman down, her rage at the boy having been put in danger clearing the girl's sorrow, the woman was gone. With utter fear in her eyes, the woman had fled in the tiny second the girl took to launch her counterattack. The woman had used an artifact, so that was how she was able to escape the mad prince for so long.

Maybe the woman was right, that she was a monster because the look of horror in the woman's eyes only made the girl smile bitterly as wet droplets streamed down her face like rivers down a raging stream. That day the girl made a vow that she wouldn't ever be that weak again. She would train, she would learn, she would do anything and everything she could so that she was never like the doormat she was that day.

"Don't listen to her, Evi-" The boy was saying, but she was too far gone in her head, in her searing hatred, she had forgotten about the boy.

Blood, chaos, a hue as red as the burning fires of hell, swords clashing, bodies dropping, chaos and havoc. Another memory was surfacing a far more horrific memory than the sad disgrace of the last.

Everything was burning.

The roses, the lilies, the azaleas, everything.

Faces covered in blood, sweat, and dirt the girl looked up at the man in white. His face was so much like her mother's. Her mother, the queen, who'd died just moments ago.

The girlhadto bid her mother one last goodbye, to keep her company in her final breaths.

The blond-haired boy and she had grown so much closer after the events of her brother that the magic of their realm deemed it fit to spawn children for them. There was no physical union; it was an accident, to say the least. Their magic had tangled with one another by mistake and in such a rare way that an egg was produced as a by-product of the accidental spell. Children who weren't more than three moons before the girl had to leave them in the care of her friend to see her mother off one last time. A friend with hair as mesmerizing as the galaxy and a name that encapsulated the beauty of the moon. The only problem was, the purple-haired girl did not deem the blond-haired part-siren as a friend.

She thought the Siren was annoying, an ignorant wild card full of chaos and discourse. She believed the blond-haired girl didn't appreciate what she had, a loving mother and more importantly a man who loved her. A man who the purple-haired girl viewed as her best friend, and the only person the purple-haired girl cared for now that her brother had betrayed her and her love had died in that very brother’s hands. The purple-haired girlwrongfullyassumed that only misery and grief would be birthed if these three children were to be raised by the blond-haired girl. So she hid them away. She spread each triplet across the realms. One in the mortal plains, one raised with the etiquettes of the Fae Realm, and finally another in the fairy realm, otherwise known as the mythical celestial realm. A place all fae believed to be nothing but legends and tales, all but a few handfuls knew the truth.

All the while, the blond-haired girl’s heart was fracturing. Each crack spread until her heart barely clung together as she sat by the queen's deathbed. The queen was everything to the girl, she took her in when no one else did. She loved her when no one else dared to, when they all spread lies and gossip behind her back, she taught her all she knew. She praised her when she did something right, and lectured her when she did something wrong. So how could she refuse to accept the mantle of the Griffin Court crown when her mother, in all senses of the word, asked her to? The queen's last breath was a string of smoke as it faded into the chamber of her bedroom. Tears streamed down the blond-haired girl's cheeks, her hands gripping the queen's pale withered ones, it was one of the few times the girl allowed herself to cry.

Everything was blurry for the blond-haired girl as she was crowned amongst the sneers of her supposed family, her sister, her once loving father, although not by blood he was once kind to her. Now they both looked at her not with kind smiles but with their lips curled into vengeful scowls. Their noses perked high in the sky in disgust as she stared down across her court. The girl gazed across the lying nobles behind their smiling faces. The greedy glances across her body as they clapped. The hungry vultures hidden within their souls as they congratulated her. The girl knew how to play the game though, she knew how to hide the pain, the anger, and the sorrow deep behind her beaming smile as she thanked all who came to welcome her to her new throne.

Nodding like the perfect saintess she was, she put on a mask of her own. Her grief, her tears all cleaned up behind a perfect air of false joy and glowing golden eyes. The issue was she could have pulled through it all; everything could have happened in peace if only her children hadn't been snatched from her. The catalyst to the blond-haired girl's downfall, to the downfall of them all.

When she went back to meet up with that trusted friend to get back her children no one was there to greet her. She went to their meeting spot only to find that she couldn't sense them anymore.

She'd tracked her down, the purple-haired girl. Confronted her but she wouldn't budge. The golden-haired girl broke. It didn't matter that the golden-haired boy also lost his children, for they were also his. It didn't matter that the purple-haired girl had betrayed her. All that mattered was that the blond-haired girl had lost everything. First, it was her mother, the former Queen of the Griffins, her golden light no longer found in this realm, and now her children, whom she didn't plan to have but loved nonetheless, any mother would after seeing their faces, were gone. Hidden away by the person she thought she could trust.

The blond-haired girl lunged her claws extended to kill the purple-haired girl before her. No matter how much the snow-haired boy felt for the purple-haired witch the blond-haired girl was going to kill her in her rage. That was until a roar as loud as the blasting of a giant ten-foot canon sounded across the court.

It was her brother. A brother she had long thought was dead but wasn't.

Fire so much fire covered the gardens as the blond-haired girl tried to subdue him. Calling upon her dear friend the blond-haired boy, who had been in the Griffin Court that day for the queen's funeral, to help. He did not know about their children. For the triplets had arrived in the form of an egg in front of the blond-haired girl's bed one day as she prepared for the evening with the snow-haired boy, who she was getting closer and closer to recently. Turns out the spell had lingered on her clothing and had ruin- transformed the fabric into a hard shell to enclose around three new living beings.

The fight was drawing on her magic, the blond-haired girl's brother was stronger, but how? She was weakening, something was draining her magic.

There was a shift in her body, in her mind, and black enveloped the blond-haired girl. Perhaps it was due to the loss of her mother, the queen, then her children, and now the memories of killing her brother. Even if he was standing before her once more it didn't change the trauma that his presence caused her. Maybe it was all three causes that weakened the girl's will to hold on as an entity gripped onto the blond-haired girl's body. It was like she was in some limbo. Getting small looks into the world but never the whole picture. Sounds filtered in here and there.

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